


The Door into Britannia

by ambyr



Series: Sunspark in Britain [2]
Category: Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff, Tale of the Five Series - Diane Duane
Genre: Crossover, Cultural Differences, Matchmaking, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-21 09:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambyr/pseuds/ambyr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus and Esca find a strange horse wandering in the mist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Door into Britannia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/gifts).



> This would be a much worse story without the help of melannen, zana16, xylaria, factitious, and most of all sineala. All remaining errors are mine.
> 
> A [podfic version](http://www.audiofic.jinjurly.com/chase-and-door-into-britannia) by kalakirya is also available.

The mist lay low across the orchard—across what _would_ be the orchard, when the trees had grown beyond saplings strewn with scattered, wrinkled leaves—turning the twilit farm into something out of Virgil’s underworld, all eddying phantoms. Somewhere in the distance Marcus could hear Cub bark, once, but that was all.

“We will finish planting the winter wheat tomorrow, I suppose,” Marcus said, determined to insert some sense of the ordinary into the evening.

There was silence in response. Marcus, attuned to Esca’s usual patterns and expecting some reply, turned his head and saw Esca staring east, as though he could part the darkening mist with his gaze.

“There was something,” Esca said softly.

“A sheep?” Marcus inquired doubtfully, after a moment’s pause. The pasture lay on the other side of the farmhouse, where the Downs rose up in waves of gorse and heather. To the east there was only the fallow field that would grow barley, come spring.

Esca shook his head, silent, and Marcus stilled beside him. Stared at, the mist seemed more otherworldly, not less. Its tendrils coiled about the trees, revealing in one moment a slender trunk with two forked branches and the next nothing but the grass that grew at the roots.

And then he saw it: a flash of red like Cottia’s just-brushed hair glowing in the hearth light.

A blood-bay horse came out of the mists, high-stepping, its bearing proud despite the tangled, matted knots in its golden mane and tail. It was deserved pride—its lines, beneath the bedraggled surface, were as fine as those of any stallion from Cartimandua’s stables. From Neptune’s.

It was beyond imagining that it should be lost here, alone, in the half-settled land around their farm. Their neighbor Titus did not keep horses, only the mules needed for plowing the fields. Marcus started forward—slowly, so as not to startle the beast. Esca’s hand on his arm, warm and familiar, stopped him.

“It wears no tack,” Esca said. Marcus looked at him inquiringly, wondering why he was troubling to point out the obvious, and saw the tendons rigid against Esca’s tense neck. “It wears no tack, and we are near the river.”

“And so?”

Esca cast him a look of stark disbelief. “Have the Romans no—” he checked himself, lowering his voice, though the horse showed no sign of spooking. “There are creatures that live in the streams here that look like horses,” he said tersely. “Very fine horses, without saddle or bridle, that will stand calm and still until you mount. And then it is into the river with them, or the lake, with you stuck to their back until you drown.”

Marcus frowned. Esca’s superstitions were as much a part of him as his mustache or tattoos, but most days he set them aside quickly enough, like a leaf left to drift away downstream. But his tone was unwontedly serious. No uneasy feeling, this, but strong and unshakeable belief.

“But if it _is_ a horse,” Marcus said. He did not need to finish the thought. The farm was new and dearly in need of money, and a beast that fine would fetch a high price at market—although of course they should need to search for the owner, first. He did not care to be accused of horse theft now any more than he had as Demetrius of Alexandria, passing through the wall.

“If it is a horse, we will most likely find it in the hayfield come morning,” said Esca with an attempt at forced levity, “and we will be spared that last harvest. But for tonight, I should feel safer in my heart if you did not go near it.” His fingers tightened on Marcus’s arm.

Esca so rarely asked for anything, it was not to Marcus’s taste to deny him. And yet—“It is no water creature, surely, with a mane and tail like a torch,” he said, aware as he did so that it was a feeble argument. There was something odd about the creature, and it could be dangerous even if it was other than what Esca supposed.

The horse stamped its hoof. “I certainly am not. And if you leave me out in this damp mist, I will burn your hayfield _and_ your orchard beside.”

Esca and Marcus both stared at it in astonishment.

Marcus had heard, of course, of horses that could speak. He had had a very good education, thanks to his aunt’s husband and rather against his own wishes. Areion, Caerus, Balios, Xanthos—he could name the great horses of legend. All the same, he had never expected to meet one, much less find it wandering on his own farm.

“I beg your pardon,” Marcus said, rather stiffly.

The horse flattened its ears. “Well enough. It’s granted. Now I should like to go inside.”

Marcus shot a glance sideways at Esca.

“The kelpie speak, sometimes,” he said, but he sounded less certain than before. His hand dropped away.

“So do the horses of the gods,” Marcus said. Had he not just been thinking that the stallion had lines fine enough to have come out of Neptune’s stables?

The horse was watching them, its tail flicking impatiently.

Marcus cleared his throat. His education had included, in detail, what happened to those who _offended_ the gods. And if it was the creature Esca had feared—well, it was not as though it could drown them in the stable, even if all thoughts of mounting it had not fled Marcus’s mind when it first began to speak.

“We would be very pleased to offer you hospitality,” Marcus said carefully, and then wondered belatedly whether he would come to regret the obligation he had just entailed.

“ _That_ took you long enough to decide,” the horse said—rather ungratefully, in Marcus’s opinion. “Where?”

* * *

They made a strange trio walking alongside the hedgerow—Marcus leading, Esca stiff as a hound on the scent beside him, and the horse ambling unconcernedly as it brought up the rear. Occasionally it turned its head to lip at the honeysuckle vines that tangled across the hedge’s surface, and when it did Marcus could swear he smelled smoke. He remembered the horse’s rather alarming threat, but he was too occupied trying to imagine what he would tell Cottia to spare much attention to worrying about it.

As it turned out, he did not have to say anything. They peaked the last low rise of the rolling farm, and their wattle-and-daub house came into view, with the young damson tree struggling upward by its steps and Cottia in the doorway, Cub by her feet. Hearth light from within the house turned her frazzled hair into a halo, and he felt his mouth curving up at the sight, thoughts of gods and spirits temporarily set aside. Cottia, too, smiled to see them, though she quickly forced her lips down into a mock scowl.

“Supper has been ready since the sun fell,” she said, arms folded across her chest, and then the horse, too, topped the rise. She brought a hand to her mouth.

“Sunspark?”

It was all very confused from there. Marcus said, “You know—?” and Sunspark said “I _knew_ this place felt familiar,” and Cottia dashed down the steps and past Marcus and Esca to punch the horse firmly in the nose. 

The horse, predictably, reared up, and for one heart-stopping moment Marcus felt as though the world had frozen around him. He could not possibly move fast enough to get between Cottia and the horse, nor could Cub, though he had leapt after Cottia. Then the horse came down, Marcus still some steps away, leaving Cottia miraculously unharmed. Cub barked sharply and ran nearly between the horse’s legs before flattening his ears and slinking back to the safety of the steps. Marcus began to breathe again.

“Well,” Cottia said, as though nothing whatsoever out of the ordinary had happened. “Dinner is waiting.” And she turned and marched into the house.

Marcus had no notion of what to say. He exchanged a long glance with Esca, who stood stubbornly for a moment, reluctant to leave Marcus alone with the horse, before giving a half-shrug and following Cottia inside. Left alone, without someone to soothe her, her temper would only curdle. 

“The stables,” Marcus offered awkwardly, looking to the right of their house. The building there was little more than a shack, scarcely adequate for their mule and entirely unsuitable for a god.

“Certainly not,” Sunpark said. There was a swirl of flame, as though a knot of heartwood had suddenly caught and set a bonfire swelling, and then it faded, leaving an amber-eyed young man standing in the horse’s place. His hair was the same burnished copper as the stallion’s hide. He could have passed, Marcus thought, as Cottia’s cousin.

It was easier to ponder familial resemblances than to think hard on the fact that there was a stranger, who had been a horse, and was most likely a god, standing on his doorstep. Cub, who had been crouched at Marcus’s feet, whined deep in his throat and pressed more closely against Marcus’s legs.

“Be welcome to our house,” Marcus said faintly. He reached down to give Cub a reassuring pat before following Sunspark through the doorway. Cub, spooked, stayed outside.

Inside, the brazier filled the room with heat and light, and if it let smoke seep out as well, its tendrils at least had none of the otherworldly air of the mist outside. There was an oil lamp burning as well—an extravagance, but one Marcus was hardly going to protest. They _had_ been late returning, after all.

Esca gawked for a moment at the young man beside Marcus before he caught himself, but Cottia seemed unsurprised. She had a black-glazed bowl of porridge already filled for Esca, rich with sheep’s milk and honey, and she ladled another for Marcus. He took it without thinking, then glanced uncertainly toward their guest, remembering the laws of hospitality.

“It doesn’t eat,” Cottia said, sitting down with her own bowl. 

Sunspark looked prepared to respond, then thought better of it. Marcus thought it a wise choice. He had not heard Cottia sound so prickly and ready to take offense since she had said farewell at last to her Aunt Valaria.

Still, Marcus could not forebear asking. “You have met before, then?”

“Yes.” Cottia attended to her porridge for a moment, until it became clear no one else would speak. “It came to the village when I was a child. After my father died, but before Aunt Valaria claimed me. It promised to take me away, and I would have gone!” she said, her chin tilted upward and tone challenging in response to Esca’s soft noise of horror. He was still thinking of kelpies, Marcus supposed. “Anywhere would have been better. Only it left, and did not come back. It was years ago. Perhaps it does not remember.”

Sunspark had the grace to look uncomfortable. “It has been rather longer for me,” he said at last, “but I do remember. And you can stop thinking that,” he said to Marcus, who had been trying to imagine a tactful way to suggest to Cottia that it might be wise to be less critical of the gods—tactful, because he knew a demand would have rather the opposite effect. “I am not a god.”

“Ah,” said Marcus blankly. “Then—”

Sunspark took pity on him. “‘Traveler’ comes closest. Mortal languages are very lacking in words.”

“You are a long way from the road,” Esca put in. He had been eating his porridge methodically, gaze flicking back and forth between them.

“I am not bound by the roads. There was a doorway; I walked through. If I’d known where it would take me,” he said, with a darting glance at Cottia, “I wouldn’t have come. Your world is absurdly _damp_.”

“I don’t see why you didn’t turn around and go home, then,” Cottia said with a sniff before Marcus could interpose a more polite remark. He was thinking slower than his wont, and although he supposed it was to be expected he still felt guilty for not playing the conciliatory host. God or no god, he had invited Sunspark in and the creature had guest-right.

Sunspark eyed her for a moment. “I couldn’t,” he said at last, sounding faintly uncomfortable to admit to less than infallibility.

“Ah?” Esca asked.

Sunspark let out a huff of air, a gesture more suited to a horse than a man. “You ask more questions than Halwerd or Fastrael when they were young,” he complained to no one in particular. “Rather, I could, but it wouldn’t take me to where and when I left. Mortals always assume everything is as simple and bland as their worlds. The Pattern isn’t like your ‘roads.’ It shifts.”

Marcus decided understanding the gods—or creatures that were not gods, but could pass for them—was beyond him. “You will be staying, then?” he asked cautiously.

“No,” Sunspark said, and then grimaced. “Only long enough to study the Pattern.”

“That took you little enough time before,” Cottia said.

“That,” said Sunspark, “was before I had a home to find.” He hunched his shoulders, and his burnished-copper hair seemed to gleam a little less brightly. “It’s harder than I thought, following the thread.”

“Where did your door take you to?” Esca asked, before Cottia could offer another cutting remark.

Sunspark shrugged. “There were rocks. Tall ones, in a circle, somewhere that way.” It waved a hand toward the northwest.

“There is another circle of standing stones some leagues to the east,” Esca said. “Marcus, do you remember it? Up in the hills? We found it when the black ewe went straying.”

Marcus nodded, remembering the day of long and fruitless searching. They had spent the night together in the shelter of a pine grove just outside the circle, and for a time it had felt like the best parts of their journey north of the wall, when no one as yet had any reason to hunt them. Marcus had taken first watch, but in truth he had spent more of the evening studying Esca than the world beyond their hollow. There had been something in him, there in the wilds, that seemed to vanish when they were within the bounds of the farm.

“Would that be a part of your Pattern?” Esca asked.

“I don’t know,” said Sunspark, hesitant. “But if the walls between worlds are thinner there—I would like to see it.”

“Then if Marcus does not mind being left alone to tend the planting, I will show it to you tomorrow,” Esca said.

Cottia gave a little snort and began to clear the bowls.

* * *

Esca woke before dawn. Even the birds outside were silent, save for a single nightjar whose faint rising and falling cry could be heard drifting away as it winged toward the stream. In the faint light from the brazier’s embers he pulled on his braccae and began to fold away his blankets.

There was a stirring from Marcus and Cottia’s pallet on the far side of the room, and then Cottia padded toward him, her footsteps soft as a cat’s. Marcus’s breathing, low and even, stayed unchanged.

“Esca?” she murmured, when she was close enough that the sound had no risk of waking Marcus. “You know you do not have to do this thing.”

Esca tilted his head toward Sunspark, who was stretched out before the brazier wrapped in Marcus’s old military cloak. He was still—too still. Backlit by what little light there was, he showed no sign of movement, not even the rise and fall of his chest as he drew in air. Esca did not know whether his kind slept in this odd manner, or whether he was simply a poor hand at feigning sleep.

Cottia’s gaze followed Esca’s gesture. “Let it hear—you cannot stop it, in any case.”

“I know you do not fear it,” Esca said, “but it is not in me to treat it in the same way. All wild things may be dangerous, and there is more wildness to it than most.”

“Do you think I do not know that?” Cottia hissed, then pressed a hand to her face. “It is only that I will not let it cow me. And you need not, either. Let it find its own way to the circle.”

“The sooner it is found, the sooner Sunspark will be on its way. And we owe it hospitality; Marcus has offered it guest-right.”

They shared a wry grimace. Marcus often meant well, but he did not always understand the land he had chosen to adopt. Esca wished, again, that he had been more able to dissuade Marcus in the orchard.

“As you say,” Cottia finally agreed. “Only do not let it bully you, and do not believe any promises it makes.” She turned to go back to bed.

“Cottia,” Esca said, and she stopped. “Would you have gone with it, truly?”

“When I was a child?” He nodded. “Yes. I wanted the adventure, and it seemed worth the risk.”

Esca swallowed. “Even so, to leave your tribe—”

“Oh, Esca.” She crossed back to him and reached for his hand, squeezing it. “I know your tribe was everything to you,” she said softly. “I know you would never have left them. But it is different, when your tribe has left you. And yes, I know now that my father was not my whole tribe. How I miss them! But then—then it felt as though he was. As though I did not have so very much left to lose, with him already gone. Grief does that." She closed her eyes a moment. "I wish now I had been able to stay, of course. There is so much about my tribe that I do not know. Sometimes I listen to the stories of your tribe, and I pretend they are my stories—the stories I would have had, if I had not gone to live with Aunt Valaria.”

“It is—hard, to speak of my tribe,” Esca said haltingly. “But I will try to tell you more stories, if you like.”

He could barely see her smile, but he could feel her fingers tighten on his before they pulled away. “I would like that very much.”

He rubbed his hand once across his knuckles, then went to finish straightening his bed. As he turned toward Sunspark, Esca saw his eyes were open, though their guest said nothing.

“Let us go,” Esca said softly when he had finished, and Sunspark silently rose and padded after him toward the door. The mist was still thick about the farm. Sunspark gave the world beyond the lintel a suspicious look, drawing back unconsciously toward the brazier. “Sa,” said Esca, almost amused despite himself, “it will burn off quickly enough. Come. It will take us until midday to walk to it if we leave now, and I do not mean to be late for dinner two days in a row.”

“Do you not have a horse?”

“Only the mule, which Marcus may have need of. And I will not ride you.”

Sunspark snorted. “Certainly not.” 

All the same, they were no sooner clear of the house than Sunspark flared with a burst of flame that twisted inward to resolve into the blood-bay stallion of the past evening. It took all of Esca’s training as a hunter not to flinch.

They moved east at a steady clip, following an old game trail that wound between clumps of prickly heather and patches of scabious. Most had long since shed their blossoms in preparation for the coming winter, but Esca saw one many-petaled blue flower half-hidden by browning leaves and reached down to snap it free for Cottia.

“I wouldn’t truly hurt them, you know,” Sunspark said behind him. 

“It is not so far in the past that I have forgotten, your threat to burn the farm. And you have already hurt Cottia.”

Sunspark bent its head to lip at a patch of gorse that looked more thorn than leaf, and did not meet Esca’s gaze. “I was only tired of being wet. I wouldn’t have burned very _much_ of it. And if I had taken Cottia away with me you could not have married her, so it makes no sense to complain about that.”

“Marcus is married to her,” Esca corrected.

“Of course,” said Sunspark, and then it looked up from the scrub at last. “Oh, you mean you are married only to Marcus? I suppose there are stranger things in the Pattern, though it seems to me it would become unbalanced.”

Esca stared at it in bewilderment. “Cottia is married to Marcus,” he said, picking out the words with care. “I am not married at all.”

“But you are a family,” Sunspark objected. “I have been—I _am_ married, so I should recognize one when I see it.”

Esca froze. “And in what do you recognize it?” he asked, keeping his voice as light as he could. 

“The way you guard them, for one. You wouldn’t be taking me here, except that you think them safer with me gone.”

It was true that Esca had wanted to separate Sunspark from them—from Marcus, who knew too little to fear it, and from Cottia, too angry to care. How could he not strive to protect them? His tribe was dead and scattered, and he had counted himself lost as well until Marcus had helped him see that he could rebuild his honor with new purposes and new vows, that he did not need to bind himself solely to the past. But neither would he forget it. Even were it a danger, Cottia would not let him, Cottia who hated Roman ways and wanted to hear all the stories of his tribe. He had rebuilt himself in the balance between the two. If he sometimes wanted more—if working side by side with Marcus reminded him of the joy his kin had found in their shield-brothers, if telling Cottia of Beltane made him wistfully recall jumping over the fires—that was his own business, and no one else’s.

“I am the Centurion’s hound,” he said at last, twisting his lips into a half-smile. “And yes, I suppose we are a family. But I am not married to them.” 

“Hm,” said Sunspark, and without another word it began ambling east once more. 

They found the circle at midday, when the sun directly overhead lent each stone no more than a thin ring of shadow. The mist had long since slithered off to the deepest gullies, exposing rolling waves of gorse-gilded hills still shedding the last of their summer green. Esca had never seen it so clear and bright before; it had been near dark, when he and Marcus first stumbled on the circle, and scarcely lighter when they left at dawn.

The stones were more cracked than he recalled, and one had fallen. Had it been that way before? When he tried to think back on that night, he remembered the hollow, and the way Marcus’s eyes had felt on him through the night, but little more.

“Will it serve?” Esca asked, when Sunspark had paced the circle three or four times, and stared for some time at the single gnarled tree included in its ambit.

Sunspark startled. “The walls are thinner here,” it said. “But—” It reared up unexpectedly, and with it rose a wave of sourceless flame. Esca’s hands jerked up reflexively, but not soon enough to stop him from being blinded. He was blinking away afterimages when Sunspark said, in a far more frustrated tone, “But it doesn’t lead home.”

“And where is home?” Esca asked without thinking, still a little dazed by the light.

“Where my family is,” Sunspark said. It made an out-of-sorts sound halfway between a snort and a whinny. “Troublesome creatures. I never had to worry about the wheres and whens of the Pattern when I didn’t have a ‘home’ to find. But they’re worth it, somehow. I didn’t think they would be. I thought, when I was no longer bound, that I would want freedom—but I find I’m still bound after all. It’s a strange thing,” it mused. “I could go anywhere—and instead I wonder if Halwerd’s son is thinking clearly enough to underhear yet and whether Freelorn’s councilors are working without me there to threaten them.”

Esca did not understand all of what Sunspark had said, but he knew what it was to have bindings slip away and find more solid ones, formed from love and loyalty, underneath. “Then I hope that you find them,” he said gravely, feeling kinship for this spirit—or god—or creature for the first time since it had appeared in his orchard. If it was not of the shield-boss or the dagger sheath, still there was something in it common to both peoples, a place where the distance narrowed and could be bridged.

* * *

Sunspark was silent for the walk back to the farm; brooding, if a horse could be said to brood. It suited Esca well enough. He could hear the curlew calling in the distance and once or twice caught a glimpse of a hare, though nothing came overnear to them. Silent or not, Sunspark was a horse, and its hooves struck the ground loudly.

Cottia was in the garden just outside the house when they returned, pulling in the last of the carrots. She straightened and brushed off her hands when she saw them, though there was still a smear of dirt across her nose and cheek, blending with her freckles. “I see that didn’t work. Do you only find it easy to leave when people want you to stay?”

“You didn’t want me to stay, you wanted me to take you with me,” Sunspark corrected with a swish of its tail. 

Cottia ignored it, giving Esca a searching look instead. “It did not mistreat you, did it?”

Something in Esca warmed at the concern in her voice, though he kept his own tone grave; it would not do to have her think he laughed at her. “No, I am well enough. And I brought you this.” He offered her the scabious blossom, though it seemed a small and foolish thing, now, half-wilted from the journey. “My—mother used to weave garlands of them, for the Lughnasadh feast.”

Cottia smiled despite the flower’s faded petals and took it from him just as Marcus came over the rise. Esca pulled his hand back hastily, though he did not know why he should feel ashamed. It was Sunspark, putting odd thoughts into his head. 

(No. Only underhearing them, and only because you think so loudly.)

Esca jumped and turned to scowl at the horse, though he felt instantly foolish doing so. Sunspark, for its own part, continued unconcernedly nibbling at the remaining carrot tops.

“I will punch you again,” Cottia warned it. “You don’t need to eat. Leave my carrots alone.”

“You had best listen, when she gets that tone,” said Marcus. “She means it.” He stepped forward to kiss Cottia on the temple, just above where she had tucked Esca’s flower, and for a moment Esca felt something swelling in his chest. He quashed it swiftly and turned to go inside.

(You are the most ridiculous mortals I have ever met. You want them; they want you. Well enough, so kiss them.)

Esca spun back to face Sunspark, and found the horse laughing at him. Any sense of fellow feeling he had begun to build earlier was rapidly slipping away.

“I meant it when I said not to mistreat Esca, too,” Cottia warned. “There is no need to taunt him by putting words into his head.”

“You liked that well enough before when I did it with you,” Sunspark said.

“ _That_ was when I thought you were my friend.” Esca thought it was only Marcus’s arm, looped loosely around her, that was keeping her from making good on her earlier threat. “But you are not, nor are you Esca’s. So you can tell us all what you are telling him, or you can keep silent.”

“There is no need,” Esca said hastily, but it was not swift enough.

“I am telling him,” said Sunspark, “that he is being ridiculous for not going over to kiss you. Both of you,” it added, before Marcus could do more than open his mouth. “I don’t understand why the three of you aren’t married to begin with. You discharge energies just _looking_ at each other.”

Marcus’s mouth stayed open, but no sound came out. Esca, for his part, wished he had Marcus’s darker complexion so he might hide his flushing cheeks. They might have stood there forever, if not for Cottia.

“That is the first useful thing you have done since you came here.” She tilted her pointed chin up and stared at Esca. “Well?”

“Cottia, what in the world?” Marcus managed to gather breath to ask. It was more than Esca could do.

“Do you think I have not noticed the way you look at each other? How you touch whenever you can? When you first introduced Esca to me, he was so jealous you had found another companion that he would scarcely speak with me.”

“It was not that,” Esca said. At the time his slavery had lain uneasy on him, and his role in his new household was still uncertain. Cottia had been many things he wished he might be—free, sure of her place in the world. And yes, he admitted to himself under her withering look, she had been a focus of Marcus’ affections. “Not only that.”

Her look softened. “I know. I have forgiven you, of course. But it does not mean I do not remember. I always knew I could not have Marcus without you.”

“Cottia, love,” Marcus said, looking stricken.

“Oh, hush! I am not complaining. I know well enough that you love me. I only wish you would stop dancing around the subject, and do—” she faltered “—whatever it is men do. Don’t you see, Marcus? You can have—what you had before, and me as well.”

“There was no before,” Esca said. He met her gaze, because it was easier than looking at Sunspark, but he did not move forward. It was true enough, what he said, though there had been a time or two in Caledonia, when the nights were cold and their fire had grown faded, that they had drawn together in the dark and he thought they might—but Marcus had never asked. And the Romans, everyone knew, were strange about such things.

“Oh.” There was color high in Cottia’s cheeks, but she forged on regardless. “Well, it is time and past, then.”

“You’re ignoring half of what I said,” Sunspark observed, looking up from the suspiciously barren carrot patch.

“I am not—ignoring it,” Cottia said. Her blush deepened. Even Marcus’s was beginning to show through his olive skin. “Only I am trying to speak of one thing at a time.” She took a deep breath and smiled at Esca. “I liked your flower very much, and the story you started to tell me with it. Perhaps you will finish it later, and—and we can speak of other things as well.” 

Esca did not know how to answer. He cast an anxious glance at Marcus, who would not meet his eyes.

“I—have always tried to be proper in my behavior,” Marcus began.

“But I do not care, and Esca does not care,” Cottia said impatiently, and then, with a shade more uncertainty, added, “Do you?”

Esca wet his lips. He was less certain than Cottia that Marcus truly wanted this thing she had proposed, yet he remembered, suddenly and strongly, Marcus’s eyes on him that long night by the stone circle. “I would not mind if you were not always proper. Nor—nor find it unwelcome, if you did as it says.”

“Oh,” said Marcus. He let his arm fall free of Cottia and turned toward Esca, though he did not step forward or speak. Esca, heart beating like a startled hare’s, waited.

“Now is the part where you engage in union,” Sunspark said encouragingly.

Cottia, no longer held back, punched it in the nose. At any other time Esca would have turned toward the sound of Sunspark’s startled whinny, would have looked to be certain of Cottia’s safety. But his gaze was fixed on Marcus.

“If we have misunderstood, and you do not want this thing,” Esca started. Then Marcus was moving at last, stepping—some distant part of Esca’s mind noted—on Cottia’s carrots as he reached to cup Esca’s face in his hands. Esca’s lips were already half-parted as he tilted them down to meet Marcus’.

When he opened his eyes again, Cottia was looking at them, lips curled in a soft smile. “Do you both go inside,” she said, “and I will find somewhere else to be for a time.”

* * *

The slope that rose on the south side of the farm, which Marcus promised would one day be a vineyard, gave an excellent view onto the thatched roof of their house. Even in the half-light of the fading sun Cottia could see places where the thick straw clumped or thinned, where the knots had been tied unevenly underneath. They were none of them expert thatchers, but the farm was too new, yet, to afford them profits with which to hire labor for any task which they could do themselves. Some day, Marcus said, they would have a house built, a real house, with a hypocaust and a tile roof.

She liked the dream because she understood what it meant to him: that there would no longer be fear that they would need to turn to his uncle for assistance, that they could support sons and daughters to come after them. She did not tell him that no house would ever be as beautiful to her as this one, that all three of them had labored on together. She might tell Esca, now, she realized. She had not before because he would have corrected her, would have told her the house belonged to her and Marcus. He had always been over-quick to draw boundaries, to set himself on the outside. She thought, from the way his hand had curled cautiously yet firmly around Marcus’s before they vanished inside the house together, that this might at last have changed. 

Cub lay beside her, and she dug her fingers into his fur, copying Esca’s gesture, then wrapped her arms around him. It was cold on the hilltop, even with the cloak she had woven from their sheep’s first fleece last season wrapped around her shoulders. She could have sought shelter in the barn or the sheep hut, but she wanted the house in sight. She had meant all that she had said to Marcus and Esca, and yet—it was a hard thing to be the one left waiting. She wondered how Esca had stood it, all these years.

“You are maudlin tonight,” Sunspark observed. Cub still bristled when it came near, and so it stood a little way off, watching her with one eye while it tried to find a few sprigs of greenery amid the dry heather.

“And what business is that of yours?” Cottia asked stiffly. She had not forgiven Sunspark merely because it had done one useful thing.

It gave off grazing and ambled closer, causing Cub to growl. She pulled him tighter, glad for the warmth. “If I said I felt guilty, would you believe me?”

“No.”

It made a wheezing sound that she thought was its best equivalent of a laugh. For a moment she wished it would take human form, though she had never minded before. She had always spoken to her horses as a child; it was a delight to find one that spoke back.

“I never did understand guilt,” it agreed. “Herewiss tried to explain. It seems a waste of time. As does much of what mortals do, really, but that in particular. One does things, or one doesn’t do them. And then one accepts the consequences, either way.”

“Herewiss?” 

“My loved. One of them, that is.” There was a wealth of emotions in its voice—pride, shame, sorrow, love—that she did not care to untangle. “He’ll always be that, even if he has changed form.”

“I wouldn’t think that would matter to you.”

It pawed uncomfortably at the ground. “You would say ‘died.’”

“Then why don’t you?” She refused to give it sympathy.

“It’s another word I never understood. It makes no sense. To give up a form—and not return to it. To dissolve—not in union, but in entropy. It defies all reason. And yet I can’t bring him back. Is this how you felt, when your progenitor died?”

“I do not think,” Cottia said with as much dignity as she could muster, “that you are capable of understanding how I felt.” She reached up with the hand not holding Cub to scrub at the tear that was not gathering in the corner of her eye. “And it is none of your concern, either way.”

“I am trying to understand. Also to apologize,” it added.

She stared at it, silent. 

“Herewiss . . . was as mortal as you are. I didn’t think mortals were people, before I met him. I didn’t think promises were binding. He taught me why one might want to be bound.”

“You were my _friend_.” It burst out of her unwillingly, a blaze of anger that set Cub to barking. She had been very lonely after her father died, while her mother kept company with her own grief. When Sunspark had come ambling out of the woods like the dream of a horse made flesh, she had not cared about the legends of the kelpies, though she knew them perfectly well. She had thought, secretly, that it might be worth it to drown, if only it took her away from their cold house.

Sunspark had not drowned her. It had shared strange tales of lands no one in the tribe had ever visited and told her she might one day be the first, had flared from one form to another, had let her cling to it for heat when she stumbled outside on a cold winter night to escape the sound of her mother and stepfather. And then when she had run out crying for it to take her away, on the day when her mother told her she would be going to live with Aunt Valaria, it had been nowhere to be found. 

“You weren’t mine,” it said, and then sidled backward a step when she lunged upward, hand half-raised. “You were entertaining, for a mortal. I enjoyed your company. I didn’t know what friendship was. I think I should like to try it now, though.”

“Why?” she asked bitterly. “You’ll only leave again.” People were always leaving her—like her father, like Marcus. But Marcus had come back.

“I will,” it agreed. “But I won’t break any promises to do so. Besides,” it added, turning its head toward the house, “if I offered to take you away now, would you go?”

She followed its gaze and felt her anger slide a little farther away. “I don’t suppose I would.”

“Well, then.” It flicked its tail, as though all was settled. She laughed a little, and felt Cub relax against her. Perhaps it had not been Sunspark that had set him uneasy all along; perhaps it had only been her own fury.

“And I suppose I ought to thank you. It might have taken years, else, and I am not sure Esca could have stood it. But that does not mean I forgive you,” she said sternly. “One good deed does not erase all faults.”

“Ah.” It sidled closer, now that Cub had calmed, close enough that she could feel the heat rising off its skin. “Two might, though.”

“What did you have in mind?” she asked, suspicious.

“I thought you might like to go for a ride.”

She gaped at it in astonishment. She had asked it often enough as a child—she had always loved horses, and here was one finer than any of her father’s, faster than even the ones that drew their neighbor’s chariot—but always it had said no. It seemed to think the suggestion undignified.

“I have been ridden, and it was not unpleasant. We would go very fast,” it coaxed.

“You are _impossible_ ,” she said. “And it was not unpleasant for you, or for them?”

Its jaw dropped open in a silent laugh, but it did not answer, only asked, “Well?”

“All right. All right.” She felt a fool for giving in, for releasing her sense of betrayal so easily. But it was hard to remain angry at Sunspark, who did not understand guilt or shame or so many other mortal things. It was like being angry at the cooking pot for burning her when she let it swing too close to her arm. “ _Very_ fast?”

They flew.

* * *

Marcus could not quite keep his eyes from lingering on Esca in the morning—on the way his sun-darkened forearms flexed when he reached across his table, on the bruise that shadowed the corded muscles of his neck, on the curve of his lips when he laughingly ordered Cub down from his attempts to sniff out the porridge. There was a lightness in Esca that had not been there in some time. Marcus wanted to etch it in his memory.

And yet—he threw a guilty glance toward Cottia—he knew he should be attending to his wife, should make it clear to her that she still held his affection and regard. He should thank her for the gift she had given them. It was only that he did not know how.

“I had an idea come to me in the night,” she said.

“Another one?” inquired Esca. “I am not certain how many of your ideas we can take.”

“Oh, you.” She pushed at Cub, who had come ‘round to sniff at her bowl. “Go trouble Esca again; he is clearly in need of something to distract him from mischief.” But she was laughing as she said it, and Esca, too, was smiling. Marcus knew suddenly that, whatever his uncertainties, there must be a way forward for them, a way that would keep them all as they were this morning, unshadowed and full of joy. “No. An idea about Sunspark.”

Two sleepy eyes blinked open from within the brazier. Sunspark had not chosen to take human form to come inside this morning, had instead shrunk into a compact ball of flame that settled within the coals. On any other day Marcus would have been speechless with wonder, but this morn it seemed less a miracle than—than the previous night.

“What is it about the circles that makes them serve as doors for you?” 

The eyes faded, and a mouth formed in the flames instead. “That’s the wrong question,” it said, sounding almost amused. “Say rather, why do mortals build circles over the doors?”

“Because they are holy places,” Esca said, glancing quizzically between Sunspark and Cottia. Marcus, too, wondered abruptly at their lack of tension. He had not—he stole another distracted, guilty look at Esca—noticed it before.

“And so another holy place might be built over a door, as well?”

Sunspark flickered, stretching upward over the top of the brazier. “I suppose,” it allowed.

“There is a place, a very holy place, where a white horse rises from the hills. My father took me there once, when we went on a trip to sell horses. I thought—when I first saw you, I thought you looked a little alike. The pure idea of a horse, and not a horse itself. And so perhaps that is where you are fated to be?”

The flames in the brazier pulled together to form a full face merely so Sunspark could stare at Cottia with flickering blue-white eyes. “Mortals place great faith in ‘fate.’ I never have.”

“Oh.” Her shoulder slumped. Marcus, forgetting his caution, scowled at the brazier. He could not reach Cottia easily, but he pressed his knee against hers under the table.

“It might work anyway,” it mused. “The Pattern moves forward and backward in time.”

“You could not have said that first?” Cottia said, but there was more exasperation than anger in her voice.

The face blinked slowly, unrepentant, then dissolved. “Very well,” the now-sourceless voice said. “Let us go look at your horse.”

“It is fifty leagues away,” Cottia admitted.

“I could be there and back by nightfall,” Sunspark said smugly.

Cottia rolled her eyes. “But if it _is_ your doorway, you will not be coming back. I will not ride you there only to be stranded seven days’ walk from home.”

“I think perhaps you had better not ride it at all,” Esca put in, sounding alarmed.

“You may think as you like, but I have already done so,” Cottia shot back. “And oh! It was fast. But you, of course, were concerning yourself with other things.” She smiled as she said it, but Esca still flushed.

“You should not go wandering the countryside alone in any case,” Marcus said. He did not want to be separated from Esca, not when they were just beginning to discover each other, but that did not change his duties. “I know where the White Horse is. Let me be the one to play guide, and let you and Esca tend to the farm.”

“I can travel swiftest,” said Esca quietly. “It is better that I go, and the two of you—remain.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Cottia said. “The harvest is all but done, and the winter planting, and Titus’ eldest can tend the sheep and hens a few days if we but leave him Cub. We will all go.”

* * *

They had fine weather for traveling, with thin strips of clouds like patches of half-carded fleece and no hint of rain. The road north to Calleva was a familiar one, though not overly so. Marcus had stayed close to the farm for the past two years, anxious to shepherd along its growth, no matter how often Esca assured him that he could tend it alone—or at least with the bartered help of Titus’s sons—for the few days it might take Marcus to join his uncle for a festival. It had never felt quite right to leave Esca there alone. For all that he fretted over leaving the farm under another’s eye, Marcus was glad that the three of them were traveling together.

He did not know quite how to treat this new thing growing between them, which felt like it might break if he spoke. The first night they took a room in the inn at Venta Belgarum, where Esca silently took the single, narrow pallet under the windowsill and left the larger to Marcus and Cottia. Sunspark, with some eye rolling but no protest, stayed in the stables with their mule and the one they had borrowed from Titus in exchange for a promise to help him bring in his apples before the first frost.

“That is a very fine horse,” said the innkeeper, a rotund man who went by the name of Calvus. There was no malice in his voice, but plenty of open curiosity. He had met Marcus before, after all, and knew their young farm did not yet breed horses.

“It is his uncle’s, which we go to return,” Cottia said, before Marcus could think of an answer. 

“A very fine horse,” Calvus repeated agreeably, and went off to the stables with Sunspark high-stepping behind him. It followed his lead docilely enough, though Marcus suspected this had more to do with Cottia’s hissed “behave!” than the promise of hay and shelter.

“We will need a better tale, when we meet people who know my uncle and his habits,” Marcus warned Cottia when they were in bed that evening. They would not, at least, have to worry about explaining matters to his uncle himself; Aquila had, to the surprise of all, announced earlier in the year his intention to go examine the site of the Battle of Alesia himself for some final additions to his _History of Siege Warfare_ and packed off to Gaul with his new body slave for company, Stephanos being entirely too old for such excursions. Some might have argued that about Aquila’s age as well, but Marcus knew better than to attempt to shift his uncle’s mind.

“We will tell them it is the last descendant of Mark Antony’s cavalry, which he has sent back from Gaul,” Cottia said with a yawn. “Or we will stay clear of inns, and camp by the roadside. I should like camping.” With that she fell asleep; he reached out to brush her shoulder, and she only snuggled closer without waking. Marcus felt a sudden urge to touch Esca’s shoulder as well, but Esca was across the room, and so all he could do was gaze into the dark.

He lay there for a time listening to Cottia’s sharp, almost snorting breaths mix with Esca’s deeper ones, and found himself no closer to sleep than before. At last he disentangled himself from Cottia’s arms and stepped out of their room, stopping to take his cloak from the hook by the door. There was no light in the hallway save for the faint flicker of a fire in the common room at the far end. He let it guide him through and out into the night, where the sharp bite of the wind made him hurry down the path to the stable.

The stable, lit by moonlight from its unglazed windows, was nearly as cold. Both mules had huddled against Sunspark, who took their companionship with reasonable grace—or at least, neither had obvious burn marks or bites. It opened one eye when he entered the stables, then let it slide shut again.

“You’re no horse thief. A pity; I’m bored. I should like something to burn.”

“Cottia seems to favor camping, so perhaps there will be more for you to burn on tomorrow’s eve.” Marcus wondered what his life had become that he found himself seeking midnight conversation with a horse. Sunspark seemed to wonder the same thing; it had opened both eyes and was staring at him. “Cottia seems to favor . . . many things, of late.”

“Cottia favors you and Esca, you favor her and Esca, Esca favors the both of you. It is all perfectly simple; I do not understand why you want to complicate it. My own marriage had a far less auspicious beginning, and _we_ managed well enough.”

Marcus said slowly, “If you are not a god, you are near enough. I . . . have read enough about the marriages of the gods to know that they are not fit models for mortals.”

Sunspark snorted. “My spouses are mortal. Most of them, anyway. Hasai always did like to argue the point.”

“Oh,” Marcus said, and stopped. He had a thousand questions in his head—but only one, in the end, that mattered. “Are they happy?”

For perhaps the first time in their brief acquaintance, Sunspark seemed to give a question real thought. It opened both eyes wide enough that Marcus could see the flames burning at their centers. “Some days Freelorn wanted to throw inkwells at Eftgan’s head for not minding her own business and letting him rule as he thought he ought. Now that Barin’s king, he throws inkwells and wishes she were there to give advice. Mortals are like that, pleased one moment and something else the next. It makes me tired just to watch. All the same, I want to be there. So do they. Is that what ‘happy’ means?”

“It—yes. I think it might be. Thank you,” Marcus added.

“If you want to thank me,” Sunspark said, closing its eyes again, “help me get home.”

* * *

The next day they made camp by a stream just south of Calleva, where the holly bushes grew in thick clumps and left only a narrow strip of land by the water clear to spread out their blankets. There was no need to build a fire; Sunspark flared and twisted into a ball of flame and wrapped itself around an uprooted birch tree that had been swept downstream and tossed over the banks by some past flood. The few scraps of graying bark that still clung to it flared and vanished, sending embers scattering into the current.

Marcus wished it was as simple for him to determine where to settle for the night, but even with Sunspark’s words of the previous night in his mind, he was not quite certain. In the end he took the coward’s way out, and went off to gather watercress to supplement their journey food. When he returned, he found Cottia had spread all their blankets in a row, with not a gap between and his in the middle. Esca had gone to set snares in hopes of catching a hare for their morning meal.

“Cottia,” he said quietly, taking advantage of the privacy and forgetting—for a moment—that Sunspark listened, “you are truly happy with this? You do not have to do it.”

“I know I do not have to. I want to. So do not feel as though you have to ask me again each night. And no, do not make apologies to me again. If you do, I will—I will—I will move my own blanket to the center, and leave yours furthest from the fire.” She folded her arms across her chest and scowled at him, but he scarcely noticed, too caught for the moment by the thought of her and Esca lying side by side, pale and darker red hair tangled, kissing—his face flushed.

“That was very interesting,” said Sunspark from the heart of the fire. “Will you all form union tonight?”

Marcus’s face went from flushed to crimson in an instant, and Cottia looked near to hitting the burning tree before she thought better of it and snatched her fist back from the flames.

“You have done your part; now have off, and let us do the rest!”

“The rest of what?” Esca inquired, sliding silently through a thin gap between two holly bushes with a hunter’s grace that Marcus envied.

Neither Marcus nor Cottia quite managed to answer, though they did all three find their way to their blankets soon.

* * *

They grew easier with one another after that, though with Sunspark eager to offer commentary and advice no matter how much Cottia scolded it they did little beyond draw closer together in the night. Marcus and Esca traded kisses, sometimes, when they thought Sunspark was not looking. Sunspark encouraged them to think that by placing words into Cottia’s head rather than speaking, suggesting ways she might contribute and take things further.

Cottia had never been overfond of kisses, though Marcus’s enthusiasm had gone some way toward convincing her in the two years of their marriage. She thought watching Marcus and Esca—or, more precisely, hearing them: the short, sharp breaths Esca made when Marcus’s lips hovered just beyond his, not yet touching, and the low sound in Marcus’s throat when their mouths finally joined—might persuade her more.

Past Calleva the road ran nearly straight northwest toward Corinium. The land grew hillier as they traveled, almost reaching the heights of their own Downs farm, but the thick layer of grey clouds that had slowly spread from horizon to horizon made it seem flatter. Sunspark eyed the sky warily but said nothing. Cottia patted its flank reassuringly, though in truth she did not know what they would do if rain swept in suddenly, as it was wont to do in this season.

But the rain held off, and on the morning of the second day out of Calleva the White Horse came into view after a sudden turn in the road. It was not as Cottia’s memories had held it; there was no sun today, as there had been on that long-ago trip with her father, to make the white chalk gleam, and it had grown to be more weed than chalk in any case.

“That’s it?” Sunspark demanded, when it realized Marcus and Esca had drawn their mules to a halt. “It looks nothing like a horse at all.” But it kept staring at it, tail twitching.

“There is a festival every seven years to clear it,” Cottia said. “I suppose it has been near six years, now, since my father and I came.”

“There is power here,” Sunspark mused. Its hide, always warm to the touch, began to feel like a cooking pot only just removed from the fire. Cottia hastily slid off its back, nearly scalding her hands when she gripped its mane for balance. She stepped away, and a moment later tendrils of flame began to flicker along the ends of its mane and tail. “Quite a lot of power. Why leave it hidden?”

“They will tend to it soon,” Esca volunteered. “All the nearby tribes send men and women to pull the weeds free and spread fresh chalk.”

“What a lot of effort,” Sunspark said. Its hind legs tensed—then, with effort, it eased them and turned its head around.

“Thank you,” it told Cottia. “And remember what I said!”

She thought of some of the more scandalous advice it had shared. “I shall do no such thing,” she said, laughing, “unless it suits me.”

“And unless it suits us, as well,” Esca added, alarmed.

Sunspark was no longer listening. Its muscles bunched again, and with one great leap it sprang toward the hill, its shape shifting in mid-air until it was more a streaming comet of flame than a horse. It touched the tail of the White Horse and the weeds flared to ash in an instant, gone too fast for the neighboring grass to catch. Across the Horse’s back it raced, and down along each leg, and finally it swept the arcing curve of its neck and the points of both ears before swirling once along its face and vanishing.

Cottia blinked away the afterimages, then sneezed as the ash began to drift down the hill. An autumn wind was rising, promising rain at last.

“Sunspark?” she asked softly, but there was no answer.

“It must have found its door,” Marcus said. “And we should be away quickly. Half the valley will have seen that, and we have no explanations to give them.”

“Easy for you to say,” Cottia retorted. “I have nothing to ride. I was riding _that_ ,” she added, more softly, voice full of awe.

“Did I not say it would cause you trouble in the end?” Esca teased her, preparing to dismount. She stopped him with a hand on his calf. The heat of his skin was nothing compared to Sunspark’s, but it warmed her all the same.

“I am not so heavy that the mule cannot bear us both,” she said. “And if I am, well, I will trade off between the two.” 

Marcus made a choking sound. 

“Yes, _and_ that, too,” she said recklessly. “We have no eavesdropper tonight, and I intend to make the most of that.”

“It will rain,” warned Esca.

“I am not Sunspark,” Cottia said with a toss of her head, “and I do not care.”

* * *

* * *

With a sense of reprieve, Freelorn raised a hand for silence from the petitioner who had been going on interminably about the need for new laws standardizing the price of stud fees. He used his other hand to beckon forward the guard standing in the entryway with a look of urgency on his face.

“Sire,” the guard said, when he had bowed and crossed the throne room, “there’s something in the courtyard you should see.”

“Thank you,” Freelorn said as gravely as he could, though he was afraid rather more relief had crept into his voice than he intended. “We will consider your words, and confer with our advisors, and return to you with our answer within the moon,” he told the petitioner. By which he meant the minister of agriculture’s assistant, who had been taking notes from a corner of the room, would write up a proposal for Freelorn to sign, but it sounded better the other way. Before the woman could mouth more than a single platitude, Freelorn was moving to follow the guard—though he paused a moment, as he always did, to run his fingers along the scorched claw marks ground into the arm of the throne.

“What is it?” he asked in an undertone as they left the throne room for the hall. “If it’s only to rescue me, I owe you my thanks, but there’s another six petitions left to hear.”

“You’ll see, sire,” was all the guard would say.

Kynall was a maze, but the throne room, at least, had been designed to be easy to get to. Three turns and one half-flight of stairs brought them to the front doorway. The two guards framing it looked nervous. The golden North Arlene hunting cat framed by it, in contrast, was delicately bathing its paw with its tongue and looking perfectly relaxed. It stopped when it saw Freelorn. 

“I wasn’t sure,” Freelorn said, as he walked past the guards and down the steps, “if you were coming back, now that he’s—gone.”

“Of course I came back,” said Sunspark. One of the guards—a new hire, Freelorn supposed, though he couldn’t remember at the moment—jumped. “You wouldn’t know how to manage this place without me.” For all its lofty tone, there was a shade of uncertainty in its voice, and a faint tremor in its tail.

“Probably not,” Freelorn said gravely. “Would you like to see how we’ve been getting on, regardless?”

“I would like to see other things, first.”

Freelorn laughed, took the final step across the courtyard, and wrapped his arms around Sunspark’s neck. “We can do that too, loved. We can do that too.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Chase and The Door into Britannia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1235182) by [kalakirya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalakirya/pseuds/kalakirya)




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